122 Wild Bird Guests 



ful and poetic is The Bird, by the great 

 French historian, Jules Michelet. As for the 

 poets, few of them have been able to resist the 

 power of the birds, and indeed it would seem 

 that a poet could hardly remain unaffected by 

 the charm of beings so essentially poetic. Some 

 of the very earliest English poems, in some cases 

 anonymous, had birds for their themes. Chaucer 

 was a bird lover and continually shows it. King 

 James the First of Scotland, in the early part of 

 the fifteenth century wrote Spring Song of the 

 Birds. Edmund Spenser wrote of feathered folk; 

 Shakespeare alludes to them again and again, 

 and William Blake never more tersely showed 

 his sympathy for them than when he wrote: 



" A robin redbreast in a cage 

 Puts all heaven in a rage." 



Nearly all the later English poets, Milton, Pope, 

 Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, Hogg, Scott, Cole- 

 ridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Hood, Tennyson, 

 Browning, Rossetti, Wilde, and many others 

 have received inspiration from the birds. The 

 skylark alone has inspired many of them, and 

 perhaps none of the poems of Hogg or Shelley 

 are better known than their odes to this famous 

 songster. 



A few years ago the writer had reason to visit 



